The First Sleepover
by LongLost10
Summary: Tara Maclay never had a real significant other, often thinking she was best off alone. This started to change the first night that Willow slept over.


There was nothing particularly exciting on Tara's agenda that night until Willow called asking if she wanted to practice a new spell. She had some course work that she could work on, but hanging out with one of her newest, and suddenly best, friends on campus seemed like a substantially better alternative. Sure, whenever they met up in her dorm and performed witchcraft, she ended up breaking out the floor's common vacuum and cleaning up the mess of sand and dust.

But she never seemed to mind, always doing the chore with a small smile playing on the corner of her lips.

As she prepared the floor with a small circle of sand with a rune drawn inside, she mentally braced herself for the future task of cleaning so late in the night. It was still a weekday so the likelihood of people on her floor yelling at her for vacuuming so late was high. She didn't care much one way or the other, despite her hesitance of putting herself in the position of getting chastised.

Spending time alone with Willow was worth it. Back home, finding close friends was especially hard with the (mostly invisible) marks of her catastrophe of a home life after her mother's death. It was nice to finally have a friend that she could be completely open with.

This was not to mean that the friendship was one sided- Willow shared nearly everything with her while they passed time between classes, between spells. Tara heard all about Buffy Summers, Xander Harris and Giles. She thought it was adorable that they called themselves the Scoobies. While she never met them, it suited Willow's personality perfectly and she wouldn't put it past her to be the one who came up with the name.

She was told adventures in Sunnydale High with the friends that didn't stick around for whatever reason. She heard of Oz, the boy Willow was head over heels for over a few years, who destroyed her by leaving a few weeks back. Tara was as friendly as she could about the subject, never having a boyfriend herself to have broken up with. Donny and his friends made it perfectly clear that no boy would come close to Tara, a trend that soon extended to most of the high school's student population regardless of gender.

There had been an instance when she thought briefly about the other sex, thinking that it was the only emotional outlet left to her, but it always made her feel uncomfortable and awkward, like she was trying to force herself into a role. Not to mention that as soon as whoever she was hanging out with heard about her family, the friendship ended fairly quickly. Soon after her junior year she decided she was quite content with being single and there was nothing wrong with it. She liked being alone with her thoughts.

Only in this instance did she regret not having the experiences though, as it left her awkwardly stuttering condolences despite Willow telling her that she was giving really good advice... even when it was something as simple as "Don't forget to eat today".

Her thoughts drifted from the land of tangents where they seemingly always resided to the current spell the redhead was explaining to her. At her description of the spell a smile appeared at the corner of her lips as she looked shyly at their hands. It indeed sounded beautiful and there was a small part of her that was inwardly bouncing with excitement.

As they closed their eyes and started to concentrate, Tara suppressed the inner enthusiasm to calm herself down to the core. She sought out her friend's mental link and focused on lifting the simple plant off the floor of her room. After a few moments, she opened her eyes to see Willow staring at her with a smile on her face. In between them was the rose, right at eye level.

"It worked."

Why was she surprised? Tara was a half decent witch she thought, and Willow was proving to be quite the force to be reckoned with herself. Maybe she thought that being 'perfectly attuned' with her friend would be more difficult. The act itself seemed easy, almost downright natural to her.

She focused again on the rose to begin plucking the petals as Willow suggested when suddenly the rose took off, rocketing away from them and bouncing all around the room. The two girls leapt to their feet just in time for the rose to land at Willow's feet.

Something didn't feel right though. It played at the pit of her stomach as she stared at the smoking remains of the rose.

"What the heck was that?"

"I don't know. But... the petals are off." Tara tried to be optimistic despite the situation. It wasn't even a big situation... but her magic hadn't been out of her control since she was little, before her mother started training her. Everything she knew about Willow told her that she wouldn't press herself too hard to do magic that would be clearly out of her control.

This wasn't due to their minds being out of sync while they did the spell.

"I guess, yeah. But it was going to look so cool." Willow said, a little dejectedly. "Plus- proof of concept that magic is stronger when two minds focus together. I mean- I know it's a real thing, I've read it in books, but it's another to actually see it in action, not to mention do it yourself. Although it seemed really simple, I don't know why some people always complain about it... and I'm rambling again, aren't I?"

Tara gave a grin and shook her head, wrapping her arms around her waist. There was a moment's pause as her smile faded into something of an concerned frown. "I don't think this was us though." She said quietly. "Something feels wrong."

Willow's features automatically became laced with worry and looked around quickly before returning her gaze to Tara. "What do you mean?" Her voice dropped to barely above a whisper, despite them being completely alone in the room. "Do you think someone's around? Something bad?"

"I don't know." It was awful, feeling this useless and not having the information she new she had to provide. "It just feels wrong. L-like a dark energy preventing our s-spell." Not for the first time in her life, Tara cursed the stutter that came out when she was nervous or afraid.

Luckily for her though, Willow picked up on it. She crossed the small distance between them and ran her hands up and down over her upper arms, trying to be supportive and comforting. Tara's heart swelled with gratefulness. "Don't worry. I'm sure it's nothing." A brief moment of thought crossed Willow's face and her hands stilled. "Maybe I'll go find Buffy-"

"Don't go." The words came of her mouth before Tara could register saying them. "I-I mean. Don't go out." Even though the walk from Tara's building to Willow's wasn't a long one, it was long enough for trouble to approach someone, as Tara vividly remembered from the visit from the Gentlemen. "Y-You can call them in the m-morning. Just wait until the sun's up." Demons always crawled in the Darkness.

A smile was slowly forming on the side of Willow's lips as she thought about it briefly before nodding. "Okay. Sounds like a plan. We get to have a sleepover!" She said excitedly, She dropped her hands from Tara's arms which were still wrapped around her own body only to go about the room, looking for things unknown to the room's owner. "I always liked having sleepovers with Buffy, and Xander when we were still young enough that it was okay." Willow came to Tara's desk and apparently found what she was looking for- a pack of hair ties. "We can braid each other's hair!"

Tara grinned despite herself and slowly lowered her hands to be by her side. "Isn't yours a bit too short to braid?"

A laugh escaped the redhead as she nodded. "Fair point. Well. I can braid your hair! And you can do something else! What did you use to do when you had sleepovers? Xander and I used to play Doctor... but you know about that." A bit of red crept onto Willow's cheeks abut Tara didn't mind.

"I never had a sleepover before." She admitted, crossing over to her bed and sitting at its foot. At this confession, the other witch's mouth dropped to the floor. It almost seemed out of pure force of will did the pack of hair ties remain in her hand instead of joining the party on the floor.

Willow shook her head. "No way. I don't believe that. Every little girl has at least one sleep over." She put down the hair ties and sat down on the chair at her desk.

Tara shrugged, unsure about why her friend thought this was a crime against the goddesses. "Not me. If you believe it, I wasn't exactly a social butterfly when I was little."

"Your parents never forced you to have one? Or a friend never invited you over?" Another shake of the head. Tara never really told Willow about her family, which she was quite content with, so she didn't expand on the fact her father's vote on her social interactions and activities was usually the final say in the matter. "That's insane. I can't believe you lasted this long without one!"

Pulling up her legs to her chest, Tara gave a small shrug. "Isn't college just one giant sleepover though?"

Willow stuck out her tongue and, it was clear to Tara, suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "It's not the same when you have a single and don't have a roommate."

"Well, I have a roommate tonight, I guess?" She said, a grin on her face at the verbal reminder that she had a friend who didn't run away at the prospect of sleeping over. Who actually was bouncing around at the idea of a sleepover.

And bouncing was just what Willow did. She bounced right out of the chair and stood up. "True! I'm such a horrible roommate though! I made such a mess on the floor." She said, indicating the petal-less rose and sand which surrounded it.

"Don't worry. I'll clean it up in the morning." Tara's previous plans of cleaning the spell remains up tonight were discarded as Willow laughed and took a running leap onto the bed. Tara bounced and fell onto her side as laughter escaped the two girls. "I take it you don't like cleaning?"

The other girl shook her head. "Nope! Like I said- I'm a horrible roommate." A yawn escaped her and it seemed like Willow was finally coming off of the little high she got for participating in her friend's first sleepover.

Tara said nothing about the comment but instead crawled up closer to sit at the top of the bed, her back resting against the headboard. "It's okay. I hear that there's a room freeze for the first few weeks of the semester so I can't switch."

"It's okay." Another yawn. It must have been a long day. "We'll work it out.I won't make you clean it up. We'll just wait until the morning." Willow crawled up, laid her head on the pillow beside Tara and stared up at the ceiling.

While there was a part of her that truly believed in Willow's comment of not making her clean up, the less-sleepy part of her knew that they'd both forget the promise in a few hours. "Don't worry about it." She said, scooting down a little and turning off the lamp beside her bed. The glow of the fairy lights around her room kept most of the room visible... at least to her, as she was used to its layout.

Not that the other girl seemed to mind. During the time Tara turned to turn off the light, Willow rolled onto her side so her back was to Tara, who was willing to bet her eyes were closed as well. Not wanting to make the other girl awkward, Tara kept a safe distance between the two of them and stayed staring up at the ceiling. Slowly, she managed to close her eyes and start to prepare herself for sleep.

Her friend, on the other hand, seemed to be out and sleeping like a log. No snores, but there was something about her aura that told her Willow was gone for the evening. Tara breathed deep, taking in her friend's scent and smiled.

Was this because of the fact she could safely consider Willow a friend? Or was the scent just comforting? She was used to associating the aroma with happiness and what Tara could pass as confidence. She opened her eyes to glance over at the unconscious redhead. There was definitely a strong attraction here; it couldn't be denied. Something in her heart swelled with joy when she knew she was going to see the other Wiccan and was depressed when plans got canceled.

Friendship or something else?

It couldn't be something else, she reminded herself. Her father and brother made it perfectly clear that anything 'something else' between two girls or two boys was wrong.

But wasn't this the feeling all those books and movies talked about? Excitement over little things like how Willow's freckles stand out when she's blushing or the way the she ate apples from the cafeteria.

These thoughts continued for a while until a small moan escaped from Willow's shape, wrenching her back into reality. Tara responded almost instinctively, rolling over and merely lying closer to the other girl. "It's okay. I'm here. You're safe with me." She whispered quietly to the back of Willow's head.

"But the frogs..." The small voice laced with sleep started and seemed to struggle to get out the last bit of the sentence. "They have the gourd."

Despite knowing that Willow had very little control of what she just said, Tara laughed into the pillow. After a minute though, only a sincere smile remained. She leaned in and placed a small kiss onto Willow's shoulder. "It's okay, you're safe here. In this room you are always safe." A true statement if she ever heard one. The next sentence came out a bit quieter. "I love you Willow." Something within her told her that the barely audible sentence was just as true and powerful as the first.


End file.
